Ren Kai walked at the front, his steps steady, his gaze sweeping across the surroundings without missing a detail, while the four behind him spread out slightly, each one alert in their own way.
They were the strongest among the inner disciples.
Ren Kai.
Lian Yue.
Hao Jin.
Shen Lu.
And Cai Wen.
All five had already stepped into Body Tempering.
All five had killed before.
But this...
This didn’t feel like a battlefield.
It felt like sothing had erased one.
Lian Yue crouched near the ground, her fingers brushing lightly against the dirt before lifting them slightly, her brows pulling together.
"...This is strange."
Her voice was quiet, but it carried clearly.
"There’s no bodies."
Hao Jin frowned, looking around again as if expecting sothing to suddenly appear.
"There’s a lot of blood though," he muttered.
Cai Wen crossed his arms, his expression uneasy despite himself.
"That’s not normal. Even if it was a beast attack, there should be remains. Bones, at least."
Ren Kai stopped walking.
His eyes moved slowly across the empty street, from the broken doors to the clawed marks on the walls, then to the faint cracks along the ground.
"Either a beast tide passed through here," he said calmly, "or we’re dealing with sothing that consus everything."
Shen Lu let out a short breath.
"Consus everything? That’s worse than a beast tide."
Lian Yue stood up, dusting her hands lightly, though her gaze didn’t leave the surroundings.
"...There’s no signs of large-scale trampling," she added. "No heavy tracks. No crushed paths. If it was a beast tide, we would see it."
Hao Jin nodded slowly.
"She’s right."
Cai Wen glanced toward the empty houses, his eyes narrowing.
"Then what? Monsters?"
Shen Lu let out a dry laugh, though it didn’t sound amused.
"Monsters? In this region?"
Ren Kai didn’t answer imdiately.
The wind passed through the broken streets, carrying with it a faint, almost unnoticeable scent.
Cai Wen shook his head.
"That doesn’t make sense. Monsters doesn’t exist here anymore. Everyone knows that."
Hao Jin shrugged slightly, though his hand never left the hilt of his weapon.
"Then maybe they ca from sowhere else."
Lian Yue glanced at him.
"Another region?"
"Why not," Hao Jin replied. "Borders aren’t walls. Things can move."
Shen Lu frowned.
"If sothing like that crossed regions, we would’ve heard about it."
Ren Kai finally moved again.
One step.
Then another.
His gaze lowered slightly, focusing on sothing near the ground.
Ren Kai slowed, then stopped completely.
"...Wait."
The others halted at once, their attention snapping toward him as he crouched near the edge of a collapsed wall, brushing aside a thin layer of dust and dirt with his fingers, revealing sothing pale beneath.
Bone.
An arm.
The flesh had been stripped away unevenly, bits of dried tissue still clinging to it in places, while the surface of the bone itself was riddled with tiny marks, countless small indentations that didn’t look like cuts from a blade or bites from a beast.
It looked... eaten.
Ren Kai picked it up slowly, turning it slightly in his hand, his eyes narrowing as he studied it.
"...Look at this."
The others stepped closer.
Lian Yue’s gaze fell on the arm, and her expression imdiately tightened.
"That’s human."
Hao Jin leaned in, his brows furrowing.
"...Yeah. And not old either."
Cai Wen crossed his arms tighter, unease creeping into his voice.
"Didn’t the report say sothing about insects? And... skeletons?"
Ren Kai didn’t answer right away.
His thumb traced along the surface of the bone, stopping at one of the deeper marks.
"These aren’t teeth marks from beasts," he said quietly. "Too small. Too many."
Shen Lu stepped closer, his eyes scanning the bone, then the ground around them.
"...So what, insects did this?"
His tone carried doubt.
"I don’t think that’s possible," he continued, shaking his head slightly. "Even if it’s a swarm, they shouldn’t be able to strip a body this clean."
Lian Yue glanced around again, her voice lower now.
"And what about the rest of the body?"
No one answered.
Because there was nothing else.
Shen Lu exhaled slowly, then straightened.
"And the part about dead people moving," he added. "That’s even worse."
He looked at Ren Kai directly now.
"We all know reanimating the dead isn’t sothing cultivators can just do. Not here. Not at our level."
His eyes narrowed slightly.
"I don’t think even a legendary Qi Sense Stage master can do that. Or anyone above that."
For a mont, the group fell silent again.
The wind passed through the broken street, brushing lightly against their robes, carrying that sa faint, rotting scent.
Then Lian Yue spoke.
"Although they say Qi Sense Stage masters can use strange techniques. Things normal body tempering practitioners don’t understand. But that’s still impossible."
For a mont, none of them spoke.
Then Ren Kai stood up fully, still holding the half-eaten arm, his expression calm, but his eyes sharper than before.
Ren Kai let the arm fall to the ground with a dull sound, his gaze lifting toward the empty horizon beyond the ruined town, as if he could already see sothing far beyond their current reach.
"That’s why we need to work harder to reach that stage."
His voice wasn’t loud.
But it carried certainty.
----
Not far from where Ren Kai’s group stood, in another ruined town that looked no different at first glance, the silence had already been broken.
Steel clashed.
Footsteps stumbled.
And soone scread.
"Hold it! Hold it back!"
Ten figures moved in a loose formation along a narrow street, their breaths uneven, their movents tense and unsteady, their clothes marked with dirt and blood, none of them carrying the calm presence of true cultivators, only the rough discipline of trained warriors who had never faced sothing like this before.
At the center of the street stood it.
A massive insect.
Its body was the size of a man, its shell dark and uneven, layered like hardened armor that reflected dull light, its legs long and jagged, stabbing into the ground with each movent, leaving small cracks behind, while its head twitched in sharp, unnatural motions, mandibles clicking as thick strands of dark fluid dripped from them.
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